Spotlight: Black Environmentalists Paving the Way
Adversity is the most efficacious word to describe the journey of Black environmentalists during a time that voluntarily overlooked the environmental damage done to their communities. Nonetheless, Black people acted as they were conditioned to: they took matters into their own hands to pursue the change they wanted to see. Among the most notable are George Washington Carver, “The Peanut Man”; Dr. Wangari Maathai, the founder of the Green Belt Movement; and Dr. Robert Bullard, the “Father of Environmental Justice.” These three individuals are prime examples of what it means to have deeply rooted care and passion for our Earth.
George Washington Carver, also known as “The Peanut Man,” was an agricultural researcher, scientist, and inventor born into slavery. He devoted the majority of his time to working in the laboratory and helping local farmers replenish their livestock and crops. From living in the Midwest and the South for the majority of his life, Carver witnessed the effects cotton production had on miles’ worth of once-efficient land — now without proper nutrients. He proposed planting peanuts, soybeans, and sweet potatoes to revert the land to a proper, efficient state. Carver’s contributions to modern agriculture were just what farmland needed to prosper.
Ask anyone — trees are important to maintain the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere. However, a resource as significant as trees is not safe from possible degradation at the hands of human activity, which occurred in Kenya, beginning in 1943. Following her return to Kenya, Dr. Wangari Maathai witnessed the frightening deforestation that rippled through her home. In 1977, she launched the Green Belt Movement that aimed to beautify Kenya with trees — and the movement was a success. Domestically, more than thirty million trees were planted. In 2004, she earned a Nobel Peace Prize for her dedication to environmental sustainability. Despite her success, Maathai faced adversity in the form of governmental and local resistance: surrounding communities neither cared for her outspoken criticism of the political party at the time nor considered the environmental effects of their actions. However, she did not allow the countless beatings, arrests, and fear to disrupt her tunnel vision. Maathai can be described as nothing less than a force to be reckoned with and will forever be regarded as such throughout Kenya and the continent of Africa as a whole.
Dr. Robert Bullard, or “The Father of Environmental Justice,” took action during the late 1970s in Houston, Texas. He worked as an environmental sociologist that documented the placement of garbage dumps in neighborhoods that housed primarily Black people. In 1991, he published a book titled Dumping in Dixie, highlighting various African American communities amid their fight against environmental racism with an emphasis on their successes and effective strategies to incorporate into all of the environmental equity movements within the United States — which resulted in his well-deserved title. As his career advanced, he worked with numerous government administrations, helping to organize the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, and won a few of the highest honors such as the Champion of the Earth Lifetime Achievement Award from the United Nations Environment Program and a place as one of 13 environmental leaders of the century according to Newsweek, all due to his trailblazer attitude regarding environmental racism and justice.
All in all, George Washington Carver, Dr. Wangari Maathai, and Dr. Robert Bullard among many other Black environmentalists paved the way for young Black individuals everywhere to arise and persist in their bravery, especially when it seems as if their voice has gone unheard. It goes to show that no matter if you are red, green, black, or blue, the environment is in dire need of constructive redirection from everyone.
